Mr. Ye Jiaying on "Nineteen Ancient Poems": A better poem is one that is all natural

The text of the Nineteen Ancient Poems is very simple and unadorned, but its meaning is very subtle and easy to arouse people's imagination. Fang Dongshu, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, said in his "Zhaomai Zhanyan" that "the nineteen poems must be recognized for their 'seamlessness'". What does "seamless" mean? It means that these poems are written in a natural way, and there is no trace of artificial cutting.

We should know how to appreciate different poems in different ways. Some poems are characterized by one word and one sentence, which is good because there is a certain word or a certain sentence in it that is particularly well-written. As a result, some people specialize in words and phrases. There are many such stories in the history of Chinese literature, one of which is Wang Anshi's "The Spring Breeze is Greening the South Bank of the River".

There is also a famous story about a Tang poet, Jia Dao, who was on horseback when he wrote two lines of a poem, "Birds stay in the trees by the pool, monks push the door under the moon," and wanted to change the word "push" to "knock," but he couldn't figure out how to do it himself. He wanted to change the word "push" to "knock", but he couldn't make up his mind. Sitting on his horse, he was so absorbed in his thoughts that he rushed into the traveling team of Han Yu of Beijing Zhaoyin, and was taken down by the crowd and sent to Han Yu. Han Yu is also a famous poet, not only did not blame him, but helped him to consider for half a day, and finally decided to use the word "knock" better. Why is "敲" better? Because what the poet wanted to show was the silence of the night, pushing the door without sound, of course, is also very quiet, but in the midst of all the silence suddenly rang a knocking sound, sometimes it is better to set off the surrounding silence. The first thing I'd like to say is that I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do this, but I'm sure I'm going to be able to do it, and I'm sure I'm going to be able to do it.

I am certainly not saying that rhetoric is unimportant, but it is important to realize that the best poems are so natural that you can't tell which word is the "eye" of the poem. For example, Du Fu's "From Beijing to Qinxian County, 500 Words", every word has the power to inspire him. In Du Fu's "Qiang Village", there is a line "The chickens are crowing", if we look at this line alone, what kind of poem is it? However, it is a good poem with deep feelings.

Du Fu put his wife and family in Qiang Village and went to join Emperor Tang Suzong. Later he was captured by the rebels and taken to Chang'an, from which he escaped and almost died on the road, and in the meantime the area around Qiangcun was also occupied by the rebels, who, according to the legend, killed that small village without leaving a single dog or chicken. After experiencing so many worries and dangers, the poet got the chance to go back to Qiang village to visit his wife and family. Imagine how beautiful and stable his heart would feel when he saw "chickens crowing in disorder", the kind of peaceful scene common before the war! If you do not read the whole poem, if you do not know the background, how can you know the benefits of "the chickens are crowing"? This is true not only of Du Fu, but also of Tao Yuanming. The best poets do not write poetry with words, but with their whole life.

I once read an article about the recent academic trend. The article said that the traditional academic culture in China over the centuries has combined being a human being with being a scholar. The benefits of the great poems in Chinese history lie not only in the art of poetry, but also in the way the author's bright and handsome personality moves the reader. The article also said that the present trend is to commodify learning, that everyone is eager for quick success and quick profit, and that many people who do learning want to get the greatest results by the most ingenious, the most economical, and the most convenient means. This is a kind of degeneration. The ancients spoke of being a scholar and a teacher, and it is necessary to devote one's whole life to combining them together, while nowadays people who speak about poetry speak very well, with a lot of theories and delicate analyses, so why have they not produced great poets? It is because there is no such combination. This is true of poets, and this is true of poems. A really good poem is a poem that is all in one. For such a poem, you have to grasp where its true spirit, feelings and life lie, rather than extracting a single word to analyze its benefits.

Besides the integration, another characteristic of the Nineteen Ancient Poems is that it invites free association. I would really say that Nineteen Ancient Poems is quite similar to Dream of the Red Chamber in this respect. Firstly, they both move the reader in a factual and multifaceted way; secondly, who wrote the last forty episodes of A Dream of Red Mansions? Again, it has always been a question, thus making it difficult to determine its theme. Is it really about the love story of Baoyu and Daiyu? Or as Wang Guowei said, to write a philosophy of life's pain and sorrow? Or, as the mainland critics say, is it about the corruption of the bureaucratic aristocracy in feudal society? What exactly is it going to say? What kind of theme is it going to write about? Everyone can have a lot of associations, and everyone can see different reasons.

If we talk about Du Fu's poems, we can use the history of the Tang Dynasty and Du Fu's life to corroborate them, and most likely we will know what he was writing about. But this approach does not work for the Nineteen Ancient Poems, we can only feel that he has a deep and subtle meaning, but what exactly is the allegory? We can't be sure by examining it, for the very reason that we don't know the exact author. However, is this a bad thing? I say not necessarily.

The ancient Chinese had a habit of criticizing poems by always trying to ascertain the author of the poem and the meaning of the poem. For some poems, this approach is necessary, such as Du Fu's poems, many of which reflect certain historical events in the Tang Dynasty, and were written with a definite meaning. For these poems, of course, the author's original intent should be determined as much as possible. But the beauty of the 19 poems lies in the fact that they do not know their authors - how can you determine the author's original meaning when you don't even know who the author is? Therefore, every reader of these nineteen poems can have his or her own understanding, his or her own association.

It is precisely because of such characteristics of the Nineteen Poems that it is particularly suitable for the theory of modern Western "aesthetics of reception". In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a theory called "New Criticism" was popular in the West. This theory advocated that literary criticism should focus on works. They believed that the images, sounds and rhythms in a work are all related to the quality of the work, but the author is unimportant. The later popular theory of "Reception Aesthetics" is a newer literary theory, which further shifts the focus to the reader. Acceptance aesthetics believes that a piece of work can not be completed by the author alone, before the reader reads it, it is only a finished product of art, no life, no meaning, and no value; only the reader can make it complete, only the reader through the reading of the power to inject life into it, it becomes an object of appreciation of aesthetics, and only has the meaning and value.

However, different readers have different experiences and reading backgrounds, and therefore can have different understandings and interpretations of the same poem. Why is Nineteen Ancient Poems good? It is because it can make all kinds of different readers over the centuries have been touched, discovered, and ****ed after reading it.

But why is Nineteen Ancient Poems able to achieve this? This goes to the subject of the feelings it is written about. There are basically three types of feelings written in the Nineteen Ancient Poems: feelings of separation, feelings of disillusionment, and feelings of worry about the impermanence of life. In my opinion, these three types of feelings are the most basic feelings in life, or they can be called the "base type" or "****phase" of human feelings. It is because, throughout the ages, every human being will have the experience of being separated from life or death; every human being will feel disillusioned due to material or spiritual dissatisfaction; and every human being will have the fear and worry about the impermanence of life. And it is around these three basic feelings that the Nineteen Ancient Poems revolve, sometimes writing about one alone, sometimes combining the two, and it writes about these feelings not directly, but with subtle meanings and euphemisms.

For example, "Today's Good Banquet" contains these two lines, "Why don't you spur on your high-footed friends, first based on the key road jin." --Why don't you spur your fast horse to seize that important intersection first? In fact, the so-called "important road jin" represents an important official position, which is a euphemism for the competition for fame and fortune. There is also a poem "Grass by the Green River", which is about a lonely woman who is not willing to be lonely. The last two lines of the poem are: "The swinger does not return, and it is difficult to keep the empty bed alone." Wang Guowei said in "Words on Earth" that these lines "can be called obscene and despicable", but the reason why they are not regarded as "obscene words" or "despicable words" is due to the sincerity of their feelings. The first is that the first is the first to be a "good" one.

In fact, I would say that the real benefit of these two poems lies not only in the sincerity of their feelings, but also in the fact that they raise a serious question in life: when you are in some kind of confusion in life, what should you do? Everyone inevitably has moments of weakness or despair, and everyone has a lot of inner confusion and struggle at such times. And Nineteen Ancient Poems raises many such questions, which is what makes it so remarkable. Moreover, these questions are not written directly, but in a very euphemistic gesture and a very subtle writing style to arouse your feelings and associations. There was a poetical critic in the late Qing Dynasty named Chen Joming, and in his Selected Ancient Poems of Cai Beans Hall, there is a passage that comments on the Nineteen Ancient Poems very well. Now I copy this paragraph:

"The 19 poems" are the most important poems in the history of the world because they are able to talk about the same feelings of the people. The human feelings do not want to get ambition, and how many of them get ambition? Although in the rich and powerful, contentment is still insufficient, not to mention the poor and lowly? Zhi can not be obtained and years of life as flow, who do not feel? The people in love, all want to stay together for life, but who does not have a parting? With my nostalgia, guessing that they see the abandonment, but also its common. The person who stays together for life does not know that there is sorrow, nor does he know the joy of it, and when he is parted at first, the sorrow is hard to stop. This is the same as when a minister abandons his wife and a friend is cut off from him. Therefore, although the "nineteen songs" have these two meanings, but low and repeated, everyone reads them as if they hurt my heart, this poem is so for the nature of the things, and the same feelings, everyone has their own, then everyone has their own poetry. However, everyone has feelings but can't speak, that is, they can speak but can't say everything, so they specially push the "nineteen poems" as the most extreme. The one who can say all the words, not all the words for all. If you say everything, you can see everything, but you can't say everything, so if you say the opposite, it is enough to make people think. Covering the human nature of this song, thinking about the heart to the place where they can not help themselves, wandering measure, often make a million or else think. Now if you are determined, a word is enough, no need to think again. Therefore, they abandoned it, must say bright not abandoned; see no time to carry on, must say that the end of the meeting also. There is this idea of not deciding, so there is thinking, so can not have been in the words also. "Nineteen" good love, but is not to make love for straight things, and must take its Wanqu to write, so the words are not exhaustive and love is not exhaustive. Later people do not know, but said "nineteen" to the nature of the noble, but its management of the miserable, then can not find it carry on.

"Nineteen poems" says some of the "base type" and "**** phase" of our human feelings. For example, everyone wants to fulfill all his ideals and aspirations, but how many people can really fulfill them? Even if he is satisfied in the material life, in the spiritual life can also be satisfied? Some people have been given high rank and wealth, but there are still not satisfied, not to mention those who are poor and lowly people? If you have enough time to pursue, perhaps there will eventually be a day of fulfillment, however, how short human life is, time does not wait for anyone, your life will soon be over! Another example, who wouldn't want to be with the one they love forever? But who in the world hasn't experienced separation in life or death? When you get together, you don't realize the sadness of parting, and thus you don't understand the rarity and preciousness of this gathering, but when you lose it, you understand its preciousness, but you have to bear the sadness of losing it!

People have feelings. Therefore, the changes of the four seasons of nature, the life and death of the world, all these objects and events will shake the human heart and temperament, thus generating poetic inspiration. However, since everyone is capable of generating poetic inspiration, why is there a difference between poets and ordinary people? That is because the average person is only "able to feel", but only the poet is not only "able to feel" but also "able to write". In other words, writing a poem requires not only the ability to feel, but also the ability to express.

I have been teaching at UBC (University of British Columbia) for almost twenty years, and I have often lamented for some of my students: they have very keen feelings and deep emotions, but they are not able to write what they feel because of their poor writing skills. Especially our students of Chinese descent, who came to Canada after attending elementary school in Taiwan or Hong Kong and before they had a good foundation in Chinese, are not very good at expressing themselves in English either, because after all, they grew up studying Chinese. I used to teach a student who was highly talented in aesthetics and literature, and he told me that he had a lot of great ideas. I said, "Why don't you write them out? He said, "Teacher, I can't write them out. I can't do it in Chinese and I can't do it in English!"

This is really one of the most lamentable things in life: everyone living in this world should have the ability to express himself, but some people have lost it! Lu Ji said in the preface to his book Wen Fu, "I am always suffering from the problem of not being able to express my thoughts and not being able to catch up with my thoughts". The saying "the intention does not match the object" means that your inner feelings do not match the object you want to write about. Another concern is that "the writing does not catch the meaning" - the words you use to express yourself do not catch up with your meaning and feelings, and you are unable to fully express the beautiful feelings that come from your heart. This is of course a very unfortunate thing.

But what is "fully expressed"? If you say that you have 120,000 or 1,200,000 points of sorrow in your heart right now, does that mean that you have fully expressed it? No. Because even though you say it to the extreme, people are not touched by it. Take love as an example, the quality of love and the attitude of love are different for each person. Recently, I read in the newspaper that a man courted a woman, but when she stopped being good to him, he killed her and her whole family in a fit of rage. This may be the modern relationship.

Ancient Chinese people had a different attitude toward love, and the standard they pursued was "gentleness". This is the case with the 19 Poems, which are gentle and subtle. We often say that someone's feelings are "a hundred turns of tenderness", and such a person cannot cut off his feelings all at once. This kind of person cannot cut off his feelings all at once, because there are times when his reason clearly knows that this matter will not succeed and that he should give up, but his feelings are not able to give up. A person who has been abandoned by the one he loves, if he simply cuts off the relationship, then there will be no more reminiscing, but he refuses to do so, and in his heart he is always guessing: the other person will not be so heartless, will he? In his heart, he always thought: "The other person must not be so heartless, right? That is why he was so nostalgic and could not help but express these feelings in poetry. Nineteen Ancient Poems is so gentle and lingering in its attitude towards love that its gesture of expression is also very euphemistic and tortuous. Its language is superficially subtle, but in fact it expresses all these complex feelings in the human heart.

I have quoted the paragraph of "Ancient Poetry is Beautiful, Or Called Uncle Mei" from Liu Foxin's "Wenxin Diao Long - Ming Poetry", and in fact there are a few more sentences in the next part of the paragraph: "The prose of its form is straight but not wild, and the euphemism is attached to the object, which is disappointing and cutting the feelings, and it is really the crown of the Five Words." In the western United States reprinted in Hong Kong, "Ta Kung Pao" has published an article, Liu Fu in this sentence, "the body of the prose" in the "prose" two words interpreted as a literary genre in the "prose". I think this is wrong. I think this is not correct, the ancients did not have this kind of usage. As a matter of fact, "conjugation" and "prose" are two symmetrical verb-object constructions. "Jiejie" means the style it is composed of; "prose" means the language it is distributed in.

What Liu means is that if we look at the structure of the genre of the Nineteen Ancient Poems and its use of prose, we will find that it is characterized by being "straight but not wild". That is to say, it is written in a simple manner, but not in a shallow manner. All of us have read the poems of Li Bai and Du Fu, and if you return to the Nineteen Ancient Poems after reading the poems of Li and Du Fu, you will find that at first glance, the Nineteen Ancient Poems do not give you a sharp impression and move you like the poems of Li Bai, and they do not give you the feeling that Du Fu is really using his power like the poems of Du Fu. You will feel that the Nineteen Ancient Poems are all extremely common and ordinary words, but if you recite them over and over again, you will feel more and more that they have a deep flavor. Moreover, when you read them when you are young, you feel one way; when you read them when you are older, you will feel differently.

The so-called "things" in "the gentle attachment of things" refer to the objects. When the author expresses his inner feelings through external objects, he is expressing his feelings through objects. In our Chinese poetic tradition, this is a method of "comparison" and "rising". The Nineteen Ancient Poems makes good use of this feature, which will be described in more detail when we look at specific works.

What does it mean to be "upset and frustrated"? The meaning of "despair" is similar to that of "despondency", which is a kind of feeling that is difficult to be expressed in a clear way if one is lost or desired, and is also a feeling that poets often have. Because, all the real poets have a very sensitive heart, often have a kind of lofty and perfect pursuit, this pursuit is not acquired learning, but he was born with. A good poem can often well show the poet's feelings. The word "cut" means to be relevant, that is to say, to be able to express profoundly and truly, we all say that Du Fu's poems are good, why are they good? It is because he was able to express his feelings appropriately. If you don't express your inner feelings enough, then of course it's a failure, but if you exaggerate your feelings beyond the actual situation, then it's not a good poem either. To express one's inner feelings directly and y belongs to the method of "fu" in the Chinese poetic tradition. Therefore, Nineteen Ancient Poems can be said to have successfully combined the most traditional Chinese writing methods of fugue, bi and xing, and thus formed the best representative of the early five-character poems in China.

Similar to this view is the Ming scholar Hu Yinglin. He commented on these poems in his "Poetry Serval", saying that they were "exquisite in their rise and rise, and profound in their meaning; they can really weep the ghosts and gods, and move heaven and earth". The word "xingxiang" is very simple, but it represents a very complex relationship between the heart and the object, including both "comparing" from the heart to the object, and "xing" from the object to the heart. "Linglong" here means through and through, that is to say, it is able to penetrate and get through between its feelings and its imagery. The meaning of "deep and graceful" is that the gesture of feeling is not only deep but also graceful in the poem. Therefore, Hu Yinglin said that a poem like "Nineteen Ancient Poems" would not only move people, but also heaven and earth and ghosts and gods.

Additionally, I have quoted a passage from Zhong Rong's "Poetry", which also gives these poems a very high evaluation, saying that they are "warm and beautiful, sad and far-reaching, and shocking, and can be said to be almost a word for a thousand pieces of gold". "Wen" means gentle and generous feelings; "Li" means that they are also beautifully written; "Sorrow" refers to the sadness of those who are not pleased with what they write in the poems; "Far" means that it gives the reader an endless aftertaste. Therefore, everyone who reads these poems will be shaken in their hearts, and think that they are really good poems of "one word worth a thousand words".

Finally, I would like to emphasize one more issue: in the general anthology, the "Nineteen Ancient Poems" are often selected only a few of them, but if you want to really understand the "Nineteen Ancient Poems", and really get the kind of warm and lingering feelings in the poems, it is not enough to read only a few, but you must read all of them. This is because although these nineteen poems are consistent in style and content, they actually have their own characteristics. If you know how to chant, that would be even better. Chanting is a feature of the old Chinese poetic tradition. I think it is a good way to gain a deeper understanding of the language of old poems because it develops the ability to discern subtleties in sensation and association. When you read these nineteen poems over and over again in a chanting tone, you will be "swimming in it", that is to say, you will be like a fish swimming in the water, surrounded by its moody atmosphere, and then you will be able to have a deeper understanding and appreciation.